Utah Dentist Found Guilty of Tax Crimes

A federal jury convicted a Utah man on Thursday of tax evasion, filing false tax returns and impeding the IRS.

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Derald Wilford Geddes, of Ogden, was a dentist who owned and operated Mount Ogden Dental PC. From approximately 1998 through 2014, Geddes took numerous steps to evade approximately $1.8 million in back federal income taxes that he owed. He also obstructed the IRS’s efforts to collect these taxes, including by filing false liens against properties he owned and submitting to the IRS bogus “bonds to discharge debt” that he claimed were from the account of the former Treasury Secretary.

Geddes faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison for tax evasion and three years in prison for each count of filing a false tax return and impeding the IRS. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division and U.S. Attorney Andrea T. Martinez for the District of Utah made the announcement.

This case is being investigated by IRS-Criminal Investigation.

Trial Attorneys Ahmed Almudallal, Christopher Lin and Matthew Hoffman of the Tax Division, and supervisory paralegal Melissa McKinnon of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, are prosecuting the case.